4 out of 5

Label: Neurot

Producer: Red Sparowes

Being a fan of instrumental metal and digging the pedal steel, Red Sparowes always sounded like they’d be right up my alley, so I scrambled to pick up this album when it came out.  But it never really hit me – I rarely crave any given track on here, and despite frequent re-listens, the songs didn’t open up to me like Pelican’s EP did.  The group’s sound exists at somewhat of a remove, I feel, something impenetrable, and though there’s no denying that these are quite beautiful and accomplished compositions, the hover around a genre prevents it from sticking to any portion of my brain.  (Because I like things in nicely defined genre boxes?  NO THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEAN OKAY SOMETIMES I GUESS)

This initial offering leans more toward a Mogwai-ish wash of sound than metal, though some of the best tracks do break out into excellently frenetic collisions of riffs and drum crashes – “Mechanical Sounds…” and “A Brief Moment…” for example.  This would follow with the album (and it’s ‘poetic’ song titles) being some type of narrative about the collapse of civilization or some other equally ‘deep’ contemplation of how saddened we all are by the world, as things start with eyes fairly wide open (first track “Alone and Unaware…” has a glittering feel to it, wandering into the expanse) then narrow down to the climactic tracks just past the midpoint, to a revelatory closer that starts plodding and then whips up to a grand conclusion.  Nothing on here feels without purpose, but that over-lying need to tell a tale might be what prevents it from being too identifiable, as the linking ambient material and the way some tracks will generally just stutter off into quiet seem to encourage one to keep listening for what’s next, hoping for a resolution to the riff you just heard, instead of going back and listening to a favorite track.

And note that I still rate this highly.  It is a unique listening experience – rapturous while it’s playing, stuck in the world of Sparowes, and then gone when you take the headphones off.  I’d hate to call it background music, ’cause it’s much denser than that, but again, there always seem to be a desire for this to float into your subconscious rather than playing front and center.  So it belongs on Neurot, even though seeming easier on the ears than some other groups from that roster, as it definitely feels like the head-in-the-clouds sister of Isis.

Excellently understated, but as my blabber is evidence, don’t expect to be able to pinpoint exactly what makes it worth listening to.